Page:Sketch of Connecticut, Forty Years Since.djvu/70

 pleasure, in the earliest ray of the morning sun. The department of medicinal herbs was gradually enlarged, as they were found to promote the comfort of the drooping inmate, and Martha had become too old to seek them as she was wont in the woods. She busied herself frequently in the construction of work-baskets, whose smooth compartments displayed the light touches of a pencil, to whose delicacy the natives laid no claim. The zeal of these hospitable beings to promote the accommodation of their guest was very remarkable. Zachary would push his rude boat into the distant waters, that he might obtain supplies of those fish which were accounted most rare, or of such oysters as might allure the appetite of an invalid. When he carried to the market articles of domestic manufacture, he never returned without having expended some portion of his little gains, in the purchase of a few crackers, or a small quantity of wheat flour, or perhaps some of the tropical subacid fruits, which are so grateful to the parched lip of the sufferer from febrile disease, Martha brought with maternal tenderness, the morning draught of milk warm from the cow, who in her rude tenement in the rear of the building quietly ruminated. She would present also on a clean wooden plate, a dessert from her bee-hive, for the knowledge of whose management, she was indebted to the gentle being on whom her care centered. She would also search the adjoining fields for the first ripe strawberries, and whortleberries in their season, and bring them in a little basket of green leaves,